1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates generally to the field of wireless network systems. More particularly, the invention relates to an improved architecture and method for connecting, configuring and testing new wireless Machine-to-Machine (“M2M”) devices and applications.
2. Description of the Related Art
Virtually all wireless carriers today offer both voice and data services. FIG. 1 illustrates a high level architecture of a wireless service provider 110 communicating with one wireless device 101 using both voice and data channels and communicating with a second wireless device 103 using only a data channel. By way of example, many wireless carriers employ the Global System for Mobile Communications (“GSM”) standard to support voice traffic and the General Packet Radio Service (“GPRS”) standard to support data traffic over the same wireless network. In such a configuration, voice logic and circuitry 112 shown in FIG. 1 processes the GSM voice traffic and separate data logic and circuitry 111 processes the GPRS data traffic. While some of the embodiments of the invention described below implement the GPRS standard for data services and GSM for voice services, it should be noted that the underlying principles of the present invention are not limited to any particular wireless network protocol.
Using the data channel, wireless devices 101, 103 communicate with external servers 131 such as Web servers, instant messaging servers and email servers via the Internet 120 (or other packet-based data network). One particular type of wireless device 103 configured for data traffic only is a “Machine-to-Machine” (hereinafter “M2M”) device. M2M devices are deployed in application-specific telemetry systems to collect data using sensors and transmit the data to a destination such as a server accessible over the Internet (or other data network). In the past, telemetry systems were the exclusive domain of very large well financed organizations. For example, large oil and gas companies and electric utilities, through the use of custom-built, proprietary data networks, were some of the first private organizations to use telemetry. In recent years, however, the cost of access to public wireless data networks has dropped, opening the door for new, cost effective M2M applications including, for example, fleet management, point-of-sale transactions, consumer electronics, healthcare monitoring, security, and surveillance, to name a few.
Even with the decreased cost for wireless data communication, however, the process of customer acquisition and onboarding remains time-consuming and inefficient, requiring a significant amount of manual effort on the part of the prospective customer. In order to develop such applications, a prospective customer must engage with the members of the sales team at the wireless service provider (typically cellular carriers or their resellers) and provide detailed plans, business projections, and technical details just to get started. Once the process is initiated, each step along the way takes a lengthy amount of time and manual effort on the part of multiple individuals inside the service provider organization. For example, it may require a significant amount of time to simply receive usable Subscriber Identity Modules (“SIMs”) for testing purposes. Even after receiving usable SIMs from the service provider, the prospective customer still has the daunting task of designing the final product, and very little help is provided to iron out various defects/bugs introduced at this early stage. Moreover, the sales team at the wireless service provider has very little, if any, visibility into how the prospective customer is progressing, often resulting in time wasted chasing poor-quality prospective customers. This process can take many months (typically between 6-18 months) and during this time, both the prospective customer and the service provider waste a lot of time and effort in these discussions.
Consequently, what is needed is a more efficient system and method which addresses the current inefficiencies associated with integrating new customers and new wireless data applications.